In a complex electronic system, there are many ways of interconnecting the many individual printed circuit boards. When the printed circuit boards are contained within a card cage, a back plane often provides slot specific connections requiring that printed circuit boards be in assigned slots. Ribbon cables can also be used which do not require printed circuit boards to be in assigned slots in the card cage. However, ribbon cables are not a complete solution since they are difficult to route, noisy and often do not have enough connections. Also, when printed circuit boards are going to be removed from the card cage, the ribbon cables require extra time and effort to disconnect and reconnect afterwards. Further more, ribbon cables are prone to failure and provide poor noise shielding, which is a requirement for many systems.
Another solution is to have board-to-board connectors which require the two printed circuit boards requiring interconnection to be physically next to each other in the card cage, and providing a simple connector between the two boards. However, this takes up space on the front of the card cage or boards, and still needs to be removed when the cards are going to be removed from the card cage.
Accordingly, what is needed is an interconnection system that allows printed circuit boards to be quickly removed from the system; allows cards to be put in slots other than assigned slots in the backplane; and provide good noise shielding.